ARCHICAD 21 – Step Up Your BIM

ARCHICAD 21 – Step Up Your BIM

Innovation has been a key differentiator for ARCHICAD since the beginning. ARCHICAD 21 introduces the highly-anticipated Stair Tool, featuring GRAPHISOFT’s patent-pending Predictive Design™ technology. ARCHICAD 21 delivers a number of other, important functional improvements in the fields of visualization, OPEN BIM, performance and productivity making this version one of the strongest in GRAPHISOFT’s history.

Stair Tool

Designing stairs is one of the most complex tasks in architecture. ARCHICAD 21’s new Stair Tool offers the most optimal stair designs to choose from in the context of the specific building.

Railing Tool

Complex yet configurable railing systems can be created that are associated with Stairs, Slabs, Walls, Roofs or Meshes.

Stair Tool

ARCHICAD’s Predictive Design Technology™ offers multiple design solutions on the fly and makes sure that the stair will remain compliant.

Stairs consists of multiple sub-elements such as treads, risers, beams, stringers, monolithic or cantilevered structures. Each of these can be individually designed and configured with parametric capabilities.

Railing Tool

Create a unique, design-specific, parametric railing pattern and apply this across various building elements with a single click.

Use the Railing Pattern Editor to customize the patters while ARCHICAD will make sure that all pattern changes will be correctly updated along the entire railing system.

Visualization

Reflectance channel improvements enables to use unlimited number of layers with new Reflection types. Using uniform Surfaces architects may render their project using a custom, single color.

The new Variation shader can be used to vary surface color and shaders randomly across several elements. The new Parallax shader effect inside Bump channel is like Displacement but requires less render time.

Collision Detection

With the evolution of BIM as the de facto workflow, architects increasingly receive consultant information in a BIM format.

Collision Detection

To help architects fulfil their role as lead coordinator of the model, Collision Detection allows two groups of elements to be compared through user-defined criteria sets. These criteria sets can include Element Types, Classification values, Property values and Attributes, such as Layer names or Building Materials.

Using ARCHICAD’s Mark-Up palette the detected collisions between various elements can be highlighted, identified and edited as needed.

Productivity

Bluebeam Connection

Touch Bar support

Multiply Dialogue

Magic Wand

Line Parameter Transfer

Dashed Line Presentation

Wall Centre Lines Dimension

Text Style

Autotext Label

Section and Elevation Depth

Section and Elevation Range

Selective Parameter Transfer

Curtain Wall

Library Enhancements

Skin List Label Object

Parallel Chords Object

Door and Window

Element Transfer Settings

NEW! Bluebeam Connection

This video demonstrates the PDF-based collaboration workflow between ARCHICAD and Bluebeam Revu. This feature, available in ARCHICAD 21’s update, ensures a comprehensive link between the disciplines.

Touch Bar support

This video shows how to access common ARCHICAD commands on-the-fly using Apple MacBook Pro’s Touch Bar. The Touch Bar is a Multi-Touch enabled strip of glass built into the keyboard for instant access to essential tools, right when you need them.

Multiply Dialogue

This video presents the updated Multiply dialog that now has extended functionality and a refreshed graphic interface in ARCHICAD 21.
ARCHICAD’s enhanced Multiply command provides brand new and creative functions. It can help to distribute and align copies of any elements along a path.

Magic Wand

This video presents the enhanced Magic Wand in ARCHICAD 21. The improved Magic Wand provides invaluable graphical feedback on the actual results of an ongoing operation, saving you significant editing and re-working time.

Dashed Line Presentation

This video presents dashed lines enhancements used for polygonal elements in ARCHICAD 21. The new dashed line representation is more natural, and the new algorithm reduces the possibility of missing the corner nodes or vertexes.

Wall Centre Lines Dimension

This video presents some improvements of the Associative Dimensions for Wall and Slab Centre Lines. Thanks to these improvements, it is now possible to place dimensions on the individual skins of composites, including its reference line, core only and all skin’s modes in the floor plan, section and elevations as well.

Text Style

This video illustrates various Text Style enhancements, while also presenting the updated, unified Text-editing user interface in ARCHICAD 21. Uniform Rich Text Formatting options and Text Favorites are now available for all text related tools to help you create professional looking detail documents and drawings much faster.

Autotext Label

This video presents various Autotext Label productivity improvements. Autotext is a handy ARCHICAD feature to automatically add various texts to help and speed up the creation of construction documentation sheets and layouts.

Section and Elevation Depth

This video presents Depth Control and Marker editing enhancements of Sections and Elevations in ARCHICAD 21. All these features and changes are available for Elevation and Interior Elevation markers as well.

Section and Elevation Range

This video presents the Section and Elevation Range feature in ARCHICAD 21. This enables you to define the range of the marker directly from the Section and Elevation window.

Selective Parameter Transfer

This video presents the enhanced Parameter Transfer with selectable preset transfer sets for Inject Parameters and Favorites in ARCHICAD 21.

Curtain Wall

This video presents Curtain Walls enhancements in ARCHICAD 21, with a focus on the updates regarding the Editing Mode. The Edit Mode is now available in Floorplan, Section and Elevation. This makes easier to create and edit Curtain Walls in any view, such as on the floor plan or section and elevation-not just in 3D.

Library Enhancements

This video presents some general Library enhancements available in ARCHICAD 21. The Library Element User interface Images adapt to Display Resolution. ARCHICAD 21 introduces the Profile parameter type. Data of the Profile can now be retrieved in GDL scripts. These parameters can be listed with Interactive Scheduler as well.

Skin List Label Object

This video presents the enhancements to the Skin List Label Object in ARCHICAD 21. The enhanced Skin List Label Object provides a fast and flexible listing of composites on floorplans or sections as well.

Parallel Chords Object

This video presents the enhancements of the Parallel Chords Objects. These new setting options allow more accurate seat positioning at the joist end creation, and sloped parallel chords are also available now.

Door and Window

This video presents the enhancements to the Doors and Windows in ARCHICAD 21.

Element Transfer Settings

This video presents the new ElementTransfer Settings in ARCHICAD 21. The Element Transfer Settings is the enhanced dialog of the Favorites Parameters of the previous ARCHICAD versions.

ARCHICAD 21 – In the Press

New stair design system in ARCHICAD 21 relies on PredictiveDesign technology

The double-entendre marketing slogan for ARCHICAD 21, “step up your BIM,” refers to the improvements generally; but more so the highlight feature: a new stair design system that relies on PredictiveDesign technology. In short, it turns any shape into a stair, taking into account local standards. At the conference, we saw some spectacular stairs designed with the new tool.Read more…

GRAPHISOFT KCC 2017

For the past few years, GRAPHISOFT has been hosting an annual invitation-only event that brings together its key clients across the world. Called the Key Client Conference (KCC), the 2017 event was held a couple of weeks ago in Kyoto, Japan, and the opportunity to attend it enabled me to get a much better understanding of the use of GRAPHISOFT's products at a global level rather than primarily in North America where I am based.Read more…